Day 131 : Attack of the Space Potato!

I bought a battleship. What feels like the entry level battleship for the Gallente, the mammoth Dominix. It's a  drone boat which sometimes gets referred to as a space potato. It is somewhat reminiscent of one after all.

click image to activate laughing at Noob mode

Look at that rubbish DPS! Look at all those hard points, why is it claiming there are only six? There are enough places to anchor half my inventory on that skin. Look at the lack of a propulsion boost that makes me quiver with fear. What now for my celebrated Brave Brave Sir Robin maneuver which thanks to Iain Banks I've now decided to relabel my "deflecting from current course and instigating a redisposition" maneuver?

Actually the fitting means I can run the medium repairer all the time and still regenerate cap. I can run the large repairer when things get sticky. The lack of DPS is due to the skills Large Hybrid guns II and BS II which will be easily boosted and would have been had I not been boosting some frigate combat skills. I need Drone Interfacing IV for sentry drones too though I prefer the thought of swapping drones in and out rather than just sitting there. All in all it is Noobs Moving Castle. It sits in a hole and spits out its gremlins to wreak havoc on the surrounding grid, all the while slowly preparing to vanish into the mist before things get crazy.

I've been prodding a local level 4 security mission agent for a few days. The first mission looked a little worrying so I declined it. The second mission, offered the next day, was situated in low sec. Who does this agent think I am? Sending a poorly skilled Dominix into a level 4 mission in low sec? I haven't prepared my huge "Cannon Fodder Free For All At This Location" flag, so sadly I decline this mission too. Today's offer is a little more my style. "Gone Beserk" is three bunches of battleships with some minor extra spawns of cruisers and frigates. The only thing wrong is that the damage type doesn't fit my guns that well. Since my main damage is coming from drones anyway I just switch them all out for Caldari kinetic dealing drones, shame I'm only six hours from upping the mediums to T2 versions. Job done. The cannons will still help to finish the enemy off.

Tip : Look up the missions on http://eve-survival.org before you go and alter your damage and resistance modules accordingly. Any tactics left there are also good to read..... if you are a coward! Yep, I read 'em. Do not ignore planning wave trigger events as I did or the place might get a little crowded.

Warping into the location I find a large ruin with three distinct groups of enemies just as expected. It looks like a bunch of Amarr battleships. For some reason I mess up the initial set up and manage to aggro two groups rather than just one at once. Even  zoomed out to far tactical view I can see the trails left by cruise missiles on their way to pay a visit. Oh well, I'm not running for it just yet, and at a maximum speed of 100ms I have a while to think about it even if I did. I bring up all the hardeners I've chosen and set the heavy drones onto the nearest incoming battleship. For the hell of it I set the guns on it too.

It's slow going and I have to engage the large repairer a couple of times but gradually I start to prevail. At one point some cruisers try to get all in my face but I swap out the heavy drones for mediums and tear them to pieces. This annoys the enemy so much they make a tactical mistake. They send in some elite frigates with webbing capability. I don't know why either. With no scram they are probably making it easier for me to turn around and warp out. What do they think they are nullifying? My awesome 100 ms speed at 40km from the enemy that is so useful?  They'd be welcome to it apart from the fact that they have now annoyed me. I recall the heavy drones once more and spit out a squad of T2 light drones which make short work of a couple of idiot frigates.

After this it is back to the heavy drones, damage soaking and blasting the hell out of them once through the shields. It's a tactical game. As long as I was calm and watched out for smaller enemies getting too close then I was fine. The main worry was that Heavy drones are SLOW. They resemble zombies, shuffling along, taking their time getting to the meaty part and then going beserk in an orgy of blood and hull. This is how I imagine it anyway, I was making a cup of tea in a couple of the fights so I didn't see what they did then. They take their time shambling back to get swapped out for lighter drones though.

Job done, field cleared, I warp out with my armour already back to full and my shield regenerating. I then turn up in a Vexor. It's tanked normally, just in case, but the high slots hold two tractor beams and three salvager mods. It's easy to fly through the area and tow wrecks along until they're in salvagable, lootable groups. The only problem is the loot. I end up having to dock twice to empty the hold. It looks like there are over 20 wrecks left, mainly battleships dropping large guns and cruise missile launchers and lots of other goodies that I can't use but somehow am excited to get a hold of. I'm a noob, remember. This is more loot than I've ever seen.

In the end I earn something like this:

10.8 million in bounties.
19.8 million in estimated loot and salvage, nothing outstanding in the loot just normal/meta 1-4 stuff
1.11 million mission reward
1.15 million bonus mission reward
3376 LP mission reward

Time spent : around 2 hours including salvage. It was by far the easiest level 4 I'd seen offered so far and you could tell by the ISK reward which should serve as a measure of difficulty.

Some of that salvage will generate another million in manufacturing profits over its market price since I'll put it into rig manufacture. That should pay for my ammo which was Federation Navy Antimatter. It is around 30 million all told given the odd estimated cost of some of the modules I looted. Given that my alt had mined around 15-20 million at the same time it was a nice evenings work. It wasn't the 50-75 million an hour they say you can earn doing these missions but I have very low skills and it is only going to get better and faster.

After all this the Dominix no longer looked like a space potato. It looked sleeker and deadlier somehow. No longer was the bridge reminiscent of a neanderthal cranial ridge, it was now the command centre of a highly (un)organised cash for death machine.

NOTE: Apologies for spending more time pasting a potato into an image than I did on the quality of the text. It was amusing at the time, I promise.